Spehlin and Phonetics


Djoga'Ro

moonstruck
Joined
Apr 3, 2016
Messages
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@oskda I only made out Kirin, which then led to Huawei. And what he said - sounds a bit indistinct - can quite well be what Huawei is typically pronounced here in Germany.
The German reader pronounces an 'h' at the front, doesn't know u-a as an diphtong, pronounces 'w' like 'v' in English and recognizes 'ei' as the diphtong a-i.
 
@levi We pronounce our double-us just fine, too. ;P Huawei in Germany is rather Hue-ah-vice
[doublepost=1535391022,1535390692][/doublepost]Ever wondered, why 'm' is called Em and not double-u-upside-down?
 
And more pertinently, perhaps, why 'w' is pronouned double-u when it's clearly two v's crammed together (and in English not pronounced like either of the aforementioned letters it could be named after)

I think that back when the 'w' letter was introduced (I imagine some time between the years 500 and 800 CE) the letter 'u' was written identically to the letter 'v' -- note that when the Romans wrote in their majiscule non-cursive writing (from which derives our "upper case" -- our "lower case" derives from Carolingian miniscule, I believe, while the Roman cursive was unrelated as well as earlier and resembled more closely the non-cursive while also looking rather weird to our/my eyes; note also that "upper case" and "lower case" derived from the physical cases the letters were stored in by typesetters for the early printing presses) they would write/carve "Julius Caesar: Veni, vidi, vici" as "IVLIVS·CAESAR·VENI·VIDI·VICI" -- the letters "u" and "j" became distinguished later, probably around the same time as "w" was introduced -- note that "v" in Classical Latin is thought to have been the same sound as an English "w", so there was no real need to distinguish "v" (i.e. "w") and "u" just as there was no real need to distinguish "i" and "j" (or "y" in Modern English), even though we find the distinction convenient today.

Apparently, by the time the Germanic languages were getting written, Latin had evolved so that "v" was now being pronounced more like English "v" than English "w", while Germanic languages at the time tended to use the English "w" sound rather than the English "v" sound (which is why German uses "w" while it would be expected to use "v" if the writing system was developed today -- the ancestor of standard German would have used the English "w" sound!). To distinguish the English-like "w" sound they wanted to use from the somewhat English-like "v" sound of Late/Vulgar Latin, the scribes started to write "vv" to mean "we really rather DO want to use the same sound as a glide between the vowel 'u' and another vowel" (like how "Huawei" is pronounced a like "Hwawei -- there is a glide from the "u" to the "a", which is what the "w" actually is, most of the time!).

Anyway, "w" is called in English "double-u" because it originally was two "u"s, except that "u" was written at the time of "w"'s introduction as "v" as a separate "u" letter did not yet exist.

(Pardon the rambling structure, did not have time to edit!)
 
I think that back when the 'w' letter was introduced (I imagine some time between the years 500 and 800 CE) the letter 'u' was written identically to the letter 'v' -- note that when the Romans wrote in their majiscule non-cursive writing (from which derives our "upper case" -- our "lower case" derives from Carolingian miniscule, I believe, while the Roman cursive was unrelated as well as earlier and resembled more closely the non-cursive while also looking rather weird to our/my eyes; note also that "upper case" and "lower case" derived from the physical cases the letters were stored in by typesetters for the early printing presses) they would write/carve "Julius Caesar: Veni, vidi, vici" as "IVLIVS·CAESAR·VENI·VIDI·VICI" -- the letters "u" and "j" became distinguished later, probably around the same time as "w" was introduced -- note that "v" in Classical Latin is thought to have been the same sound as an English "w", so there was no real need to distinguish "v" (i.e. "w") and "u" just as there was no real need to distinguish "i" and "j" (or "y" in Modern English), even though we find the distinction convenient today.

Apparently, by the time the Germanic languages were getting written, Latin had evolved so that "v" was now being pronounced more like English "v" than English "w", while Germanic languages at the time tended to use the English "w" sound rather than the English "v" sound (which is why German uses "w" while it would be expected to use "v" if the writing system was developed today -- the ancestor of standard German would have used the English "w" sound!). To distinguish the English-like "w" sound they wanted to use from the somewhat English-like "v" sound of Late/Vulgar Latin, the scribes started to write "vv" to mean "we really rather DO want to use the same sound as a glide between the vowel 'u' and another vowel" (like how "Huawei" is pronounced a like "Hwawei -- there is a glide from the "u" to the "a", which is what the "w" actually is, most of the time!).

Anyway, "w" is called in English "double-u" because it originally was two "u"s, except that "u" was written at the time of "w"'s introduction as "v" as a separate "u" letter did not yet exist.

(Pardon the rambling structure, did not have time to edit!)


I had to read this twice because I was distracted the first time, but I'm glad I did. Thank you for this fascinating post!
 
I have heard it called double v, but I may be remembering an adult (when I was a kid) trying to make a joke about its literal appearance.
 
Considering, that voo is Portuguese for flight, who would come up with company and product names like VOOPOO Rimfire?
(It's a product, you put to your mouth actually.)

EDIT: Thought, I was in the Absurdism Corner here.
 
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Considering, that voo is Portuguese for flight, who would come up with company and product names like VOOPOO Rimfire?
(It's a product, you put to your mouth actually.)

EDIT: Thought, I was in the Absurdism Corner here.

Reminds me of Rolls-Royce's classic car, Silver Mist
 
I think that back when the 'w' letter was introduced (I imagine some time between the years 500 and 800 CE) the letter 'u' was written identically to the letter 'v' -- note that when the Romans wrote in their majiscule non-cursive writing (from which derives our "upper case" -- our "lower case" derives from Carolingian miniscule, I believe, while the Roman cursive was unrelated as well as earlier and resembled more closely the non-cursive while also looking rather weird to our/my eyes; note also that "upper case" and "lower case" derived from the physical cases the letters were stored in by typesetters for the early printing presses) they would write/carve "Julius Caesar: Veni, vidi, vici" as "IVLIVS·CAESAR·VENI·VIDI·VICI" -- the letters "u" and "j" became distinguished later, probably around the same time as "w" was introduced -- note that "v" in Classical Latin is thought to have been the same sound as an English "w", so there was no real need to distinguish "v" (i.e. "w") and "u" just as there was no real need to distinguish "i" and "j" (or "y" in Modern English), even though we find the distinction convenient today.

Apparently, by the time the Germanic languages were getting written, Latin had evolved so that "v" was now being pronounced more like English "v" than English "w", while Germanic languages at the time tended to use the English "w" sound rather than the English "v" sound (which is why German uses "w" while it would be expected to use "v" if the writing system was developed today -- the ancestor of standard German would have used the English "w" sound!). To distinguish the English-like "w" sound they wanted to use from the somewhat English-like "v" sound of Late/Vulgar Latin, the scribes started to write "vv" to mean "we really rather DO want to use the same sound as a glide between the vowel 'u' and another vowel" (like how "Huawei" is pronounced a like "Hwawei -- there is a glide from the "u" to the "a", which is what the "w" actually is, most of the time!).

Anyway, "w" is called in English "double-u" because it originally was two "u"s, except that "u" was written at the time of "w"'s introduction as "v" as a separate "u" letter did not yet exist.

(Pardon the rambling structure, did not have time to edit!)

just today i was looking at a book of fonts. ancient and medieval fonts taken from numerous texts. what i noticed is that even up to the 1300's there were a lot of missing letters. J.K.W most notable amongst the missing. some of the earlier fonts had even more letters missing. thats missing from the modern 26 letter alphabet.
p.s. MR J Ceaser passed on 15 March 44 BC, beware the ides of march...
 
@oskda I only made out Kirin, which then led to Huawei. And what he said - sounds a bit indistinct - can quite well be what Huawei is typically pronounced here in Germany.
The German reader pronounces an 'h' at the front, doesn't know u-a as an diphtong, pronounces 'w' like 'v' in English and recognizes 'ei' as the diphtong a-i.

Curiously In Spanish we pronounce Huawei exactly like Chinese do (if Google talking is correct :D of course) and it is quite similar to English pronunciation in this case. But with ED using German pronunciation/phonetics I was unable to imagine it was Huawei :) For Kirin I have the same problem: in Enlish pronunciation I would understand it (becasuse it is quite similar to Spanish pronunciation/phonetics in this case), but in German pronunciation I had no idea it is :)

IMO the problem is that English is a bad as international language because it has little correlation between pronunciation/phonetics and writing. If English had a 100% or near 100% correlation between written and spoken language, I suppose ED speaking that language would pronounce Huawei and Kirin in a way all or us would understand.

English is an easy-simple language, except in pronunciation/phonetics (it has much more phonemes than letters they write, because the use an alphabet, of other language, Latin, not correlated with them) where you must learn for each word how it is pronounced and how it is written as there is no good correlation between speaking and written language in English.

In the opposite side in Spanish language, my mother language, derived from Vulgar Latin and using Latin alphabet from the beginning, when you see a written text you know 100% exactly how it is pronounced and. The inverse (from speaking to text) is like 95% because for example "v" and "b" are now pronounced in the same way (in old Spanish they were different but that was lost), but for most you hear something and you know how it is written.

I think the ideal is 100% correlation in both directions, and if you write only 26 letters you must have only 26 phonemes in 100% correlation.

Some times I dream that we use a 100% perfect and powerful synthetic language as international standard language, for example Lojban https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban
But I am realistic and I know we are stuck with English as international language and that isn't going to change in our lives or in our children life, nor theirs :)

Please don't misunderstand my words. I have nothing against English language or any other language (all of them have his historical and complex evolution, its natural speakers etc... all totally valuable), but simply I think it isn't good as international language because of its phonetics. It may be no one natural language is perfect for international standard usage, because all have imperfections in one or other way, so I would prefer a 100% perfect and powerful synthetic language for standard international use.

[doublepost=1535453890,1535452910][/doublepost]
Well, in French we call it "double V" ;-)

The same in Spanish: we call it "double v" ("uve doble" in Spanish).
 
Some times I dream that we use a 100% perfect and powerful synthetic language as international standard language, for example Lojban https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban
Hey I started recently (like two weeks ago) to spend some time with a team developping a FLOSS MMORPG (Khaganat - developped in France mostly by French and in French for now) where the "historical" language is lojban ; the "official" common language will be simpler to learn, with less phonemes (to avoid possible confusions for people with different mother tongues, like R, which is a nightmare internationally, and also there id F but not V, and P but not B, and so on) but with lojban-inspired root words. That work of creating the language is really interesting (and of course the creation of the whole universe in this game in itself, too).

What's that derailing thing again ? :oops:
 
@oskda Your Royal-<forgot-the-name>-institution kept the written language close to the spoken one. That makes it easier for learners to pronounce the words correctly.
In English, they were preserving the spelling, so that it's easier to see the etymology behind it. At least, that's whta's said now, when asked for the advantage. And I think, - given that the English vocabulary is rather roman - that actually makes it easier to learn (for the European corpus academia used to latin thus recognizing the words and dealing a lot in writing).
 
Hey I started recently (like two weeks ago) to spend some time with a team developping a FLOSS MMORPG (Khaganat - developped in France mostly by French and in French for now) where the "historical" language is lojban ; the "official" common language will be simpler to learn, with less phonemes (to avoid possible confusions for people with different mother tongues, like R, which is a nightmare internationally, and also there id F but not V, and P but not B, and so on) but with lojban-inspired root words. That work of creating the language is really interesting (and of course the creation of the whole universe in this game in itself, too).

What's that derailing thing again ? :oops:

Very very interesting, although I think to use COMPLETE Lojban language, instead of "REDUCED/SIMPLIFIED/MODIFIED" one, would be more interesting. In the same way I think that to obtain more international success it would be better to use English, instead of French (of course website can have all in dual English and French pages), because most people in world use English as international language. If someone, who can't speak French, finds a page in French (and not translated to English) he would be in inferiority.

The more interesting part in Lojban aren't words BUT language structure, the powerful way it can construct logical sentences.

In any case it is a interesting project.
[doublepost=1535464404,1535458057][/doublepost]
@oskda Your Royal-<forgot-the-name>-institution kept the written language close to the spoken one. That makes it easier for learners to pronounce the words correctly.
In English, they were preserving the spelling, so that it's easier to see the etymology behind it. At least, that's whta's said now, when asked for the advantage. And I think, - given that the English vocabulary is rather roman - that actually makes it easier to learn (for the European corpus academia used to latin thus recognizing the words and dealing a lot in writing).


Royal Spanish Academy (Real Academia Española, RAE) was founded in 1713, imitating French (Académie française) and Italian (Accademia della Crusca). Obviously RAE has helped and fixed language since then, but Spanish/Castilian language existed much before, and before RAE Spanish/Castilian language had very close correlation between spoken and written language. For example I can get a copy of original Don Quixote published in 1605 and read/spell it (very few phonemes have changed).

In 1492 was published the first work dedicated to the Spanish language and its rules, and at the same time it is the first grammar of a modern European language to be published. Two centuries before RAE.

English language has no equivalent to Spanish/French/Italian academies, but IMO the problem is no that, but the historic creation and evolution of this language.

Even in English if you try to create a modern written language equivalent to spoken language, in the way it has a 100% correlation between spoken and written language, you encounter that English have 24 consonant phonemes and... HOW MANY VOWELS? :) Like 12 ?? So like 36 phonemes.

In modern Latin alphabet we have only 26 letters, so that would be a problem: you need to add extra symbols or a lot of new letters or combine letters to have 36 equivalences. So if someone wanted to regulate English so correlation be perfect or near perfect, that would be very problematic.
 
English is a bad as international language

I think I agree with that, if you consider it a single language. Things are a lot more conformant if you consider spoken English and written English to be two separate languages, and you'll find some quite competent English people who are clearly translating between the two when reading out written text.
 
@oskda With five vowels and ^, ` alone you get fifteen. Other requests? :)

@levi I must be extremly competent then. I don't even notice, that I do two.
 
So we are all agreed, the new international language should be Latin, right?

Latin doesn't meet most requirements: ideal language need to be as culturally neutral as possible (Latin is a dead language but with a lot of history and heritage in a lot of western languages), easy, without ambiguities and irregular cases that most natural languages have, and it must be more powerful than natural languages in a logical way.

Lojban is the opposite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban#Lojban_as_a_speakable_logic

Of course, you were joking when you said Latin :)
 
So we are all agreed, the new international language should be Latin, right?
Except that you'll hardly find people who are able to teach you vulgar Latin. The stuff you commonly learn isn't really what you'd need to know to actually speak Latin. It is a literary language solely used by the academics, people you met on the roads of ancient Rome didn't speak like this.

Next issue would still be the pronunciation, it changed a lot in all those centuries. Especially relevant in Germany is the pronunciation of "ae", which is commonly taught to be pronounced like the German "ä" (the umlaut is actually correctly escaped by writing "ae" in German!) - while the Caesarian pronunciation (I'm one of the few Germans who actually learned it this way \o_O/ ) is closer to a sailor yelling "aye".
 
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